)
>>
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
>>
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v27 - Wat to Zor
with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
## p. 15928 (#268) ##########################################
15928
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God! He needeth not
The poor device of man.
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.
Ye praise his justice; even such
His pitying love I deem:
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.
Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord's beatitudes
And prayer upon the cross.
More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas! I know:
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
Too small the merit show.
I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil mine eyes for shame,
And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.
I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within;
I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.
Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings:
I know that God is good!
Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see,
## p. 15929 (#269) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15929
But nothing can be good in him
Which evil is in me.
The wrong that pains my soul below,
I dare not throne above:
I know not of his hate — I know
His goodness and his love.
I dimly guess from blessings known
Of greater out of sight,
And with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments too are right.
I long for household voices gone,
For vanished smiles I long;
But God hath led my dear ones on,
And he can do no wrong.
I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
And if my heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed he will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.
No offering of my own I have,
Nor works my faith to prove;
I can but give the gifts he gave,
And plead his love for love.
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar;
No harm from him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where his islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond his love and care.
## p. 15930 (#270) ##########################################
15930
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
ICHABOD!
S°
O FALLEN! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Revile him not, - the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven ?
Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains, –
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from tho great eyes
The soul has filed:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame:
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
## p. 15931 (#271) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15931
THE BAREFOOT BOY
B
LESSINGS on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,-
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, – the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools:
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl, and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the groundnut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans ! -
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
## p. 15932 (#272) ##########################################
;5932
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, -
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel-pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread, -
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch; pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
## p. 15933 (#273) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15933
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat.
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
THE FAREWELL
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTH-
ERN BONDAGE
G
ONE, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air ;-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
## p. 15934 (#274) ##########################################
15934
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,-
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again,
There no brother's voice shall greet them,-
There no father's welcome meet them.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood's place of play,
From the cool spring where they drank,
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank,-
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there, -
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Toiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler's prey.
Oh that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant's power is o'er
And the fetter galls no more!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
## p. 15935 (#275) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15935 .
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth,-
By the bruised reed He spareth,-
Oh, may He to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother's love.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
BARCLAY OF URY
P ,
U By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding;
And to all he saw and heard
Answering not with bitter word,
Turning not for chiding.
Came a troop with broadswords swinging,
Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
Loose and free and froward;
Quoth the foremost, «Ride him down!
Push him! prick him! through the town
Drive the Quaker coward!
(
## p. 15936 (#276) ##########################################
15936
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud,
Barclay! ho! a Barclay! ”
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle-tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly,
Who with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud, “God save us!
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle-deep in Lützen's blood,
With the brave Gustavus ? »
"Nay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
“Put it up, I pray thee:
Passive to his holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though he slay me.
Pledges of thy love and faith,
Proved on many a field of death,
Not by me are needed. ”
Marveled much that henchman bold
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
«Woe's the day! ” he sadly said,
With a slowly shaking head
And a look of pity:
“Ury's honest lord reviled,
Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city!
“Speak the word, and master mine,
As we charged on Tilly's line
And his Walloon lancers,
Smiting through their midst we'll teach
Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers! ”
“Marvel not, mine ancient friend:
Like beginning, like the end,”
Quoth the Laird of Ury:
## p. 15937 (#277) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15937
(
“Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
“Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer:
While for them he suffereth long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?
“Happier I, with loss of all,
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen,
Riding out from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me;
“When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
«Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friend's falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving;
But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords,
Warm and fresh and living.
« Through this dark and stormy night
Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking;
Knowing God's own time is best,
In a patient hope I rest
For the full day-breaking! ”
So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison,
Where, through iron grates, he heard
Poor disciples of the Word
Preach of Christ arisen!
XXVII-997
## p. 15938 (#278) ##########################################
15938
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told
Of thy day of trial :
Every age on him who strays
From its broad and beaten ways
Pours its sevenfold vial.
Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;
And while hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter:
Knowing this, that never yet
Share of truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.
Thus, with somewhat of the seer,
Must the moral pioneer
From the future borrow:
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And on midnight's sky of rain
Paint the golden morrow!
CENTENNIAL HYMN
0
UR father's God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and thee;
To thank thee for the era done,
And trust thee for the opening one.
Here, where of old, by thy design,
The fathers spake that word of thine,
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
## p. 15939 (#279) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15939
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
Thou who hast here in concord furled
The war-flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfill
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank thee; but withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,–
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold!
Oh make thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law;
And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
-
WINTER IN-DOORS
From (Snow-Bound)
A
T LAST the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow;
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
## p. 15940 (#280) ##########################################
15940
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment more than wealth;
With simple wishes (not the weak
Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.
Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed with the cider mug their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks wrestling rolled :
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine.
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed
## p. 15941 (#281) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15941
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defense
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells sound;
And following where the teamsters led,
The wise old doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say -
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all —
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother's aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer's sight
The Quaker matron's inward light,
The doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!
So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score:
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid ;
And poetry — or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
## p. 15942 (#282) ##########################################
15942
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding-bell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and lovelorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!
CHILD-SONGS
ST
TILL linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The echoes of the home-born hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,
So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.
## p. 15943 (#283) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15943
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born!
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
. From lisping voices learns, —
The voices loved of him who sang
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side, -
Heard in the Teuton's household songs
And folk-lore of the Finn,
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ Child enters in!
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels;
The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath his small interpreters:
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Our eyes of faith grow dim;
But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him!
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold,
The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom! — Teach thou us,
0 Master most divine,
To feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of thine!
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds;
## p. 15944 (#284) ##########################################
15944
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
No cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall;
The mind of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all!
THE YANKEE GIRL
S**
HE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!
How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!
Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,-
The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?
'Tis the great Southern planter,— the master who waves
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.
“Nay, Ellen, - for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,
Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;
Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!
“But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them,-
For shame, Ellen, shame! - cast thy bondage aside,
And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.
« Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,
But where flowers are blossoming all the year long;
Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,
And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!
“Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all
Depart at thy bidding and come'at thy call;
They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law. ”
»
Oh, could ye have seen her that pride of our girls –
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,
## p. 15945 (#285) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15945
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!
“Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!
“And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy flowers;
But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!
« Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee! »
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
SPEA
PEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away,
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array,
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they far or come they
near ?
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear.
“Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls:
Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls! ”
Who is losing ? who is winning ? —“Over hill and over plain,
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain. "
Holy mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more. -
“Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse,
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain
course. ”
Look forth once more, Ximena! —“Ah! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.
“Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!
## p. 15946 (#286) ##########################################
15946
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together
fall:
Like a plowshare in the fallow, through them plows the Northern
ball.
)
>>
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost and who has
won ? -
"Alas! alas! I know not: friend and foe together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!
с
"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting — Blessed Mother, save my
brain !
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain.
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to
rise :
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes!
“O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my
knee:
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me ?
canst thou see?
O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more
On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! mercy! all is o'er! ”
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said :
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away;
But as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead:
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath
of pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly
smiled:
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did she watch beside her child ?
All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother! ” murmured he, and died!
## p. 15947 (#287) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15947
>>
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping lonely in the North!
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.
Look forth once more, Ximena! — Like a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death
behind:
Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive:
Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive! )
Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool gray shadows
fall:
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle
rolled;
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lack-
ing food;
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern
tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours:
Upward, through its smoke and ashes, spring afresh the Eden
flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air !
THE SEER
I
HEAR the far-off voyager's horn,
I see the Yankee's trail;
His foot on every mountain pass,
On every stream his sail.
He's whittling round St. Mary's Falls,
Upon his loaded wain;
He's leaving on the pictured rocks
His fresh tobacco stain.
I hear the mattock in the mine,
The axe-stroke in the dell,
## p. 15948 (#288) ##########################################
15948
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
The clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuit's chapel bell.
I see the swarthy trappers come
From Mississippi's springs;
The war-chiefs with their painted bows,
And crest of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe
The steamer smokes and raves;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves.
By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see the peddler's show,-
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty with the low.
I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves that soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find -
The raw material of a State,
Its music and its mind.
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train,
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain. .
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindled on its way;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray.
## p. 15949 (#289) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15949
BURNS
(ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM)
N°
MORE these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover:
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of, live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning, -
The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
I heard the squirrels leaping,
The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.
## p. 15950 (#290) ##########################################
15950
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
I watched him while in sportive mood
I read The Twa Dogs'' story,
And half believed he understood
The poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs! - The golden hours
Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor:
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When fariner boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already ?
I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.
I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweet-brier and the clover;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood-hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,
The child of God's baptizing!
## p. 15951 (#291) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15951
With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy.
And if at times an evil strain,
To lawless love appealing,
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,
It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining:
No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings;
Sweet Soul of Song! -I own my debt
Uncanceled by his failings!
Lament who will the ribald line
Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.
Not his the song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render,-
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor!
But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer ?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer ?
Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So 'Bonnie Doon' but tarry;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary!
## p. 15952 (#292) ##########################################
15952
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
THE SUMMONS
M
Y EAR is full of summer sounds,
Of summer sights my languid eye;
Beyond the dusty village bounds
I loiter in my daily rounds,
And in the noontime shadows lie.
I hear the wild bee wind his horn,
The bird swings on the ripened wheat,
The long green lances of the corn
Are tilting in the winds of morn,
The locust shrills his song of heat.
Another sound my spirit hears -
A deeper sound that drowns them all:
A voice of pleading choked with tears,
The call of human hopes and fears,
The Macedonian cry to Paul.
The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;
I know the word and countersign:
Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,
Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
I know the place that should be mine.
Shamed be the hands that idly fold,
And lips that woo the reed's accord,
When laggard Time the hour has tolled
For true with false and new with old
To fight the battles of the Lord!
O brothers! blest by partial Fate
With power to match the will and deed,
To him your summons comes too late
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,
And has no answer but God-speed!
## p. 15953 (#293) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15953
THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
(WRITTEN WHEN THE POET WAS NEARLY 83)
S
.
UMMER's last sun nigh unto setting shines
Through yon columnar pines,
And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
Its golden lines are
re drawn.
Dreaming of long-gone summer days like this,
Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
Have still their old delight,
I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
Lapse tenderly away;
And wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
I ask, “Is this the last ?
« Will nevermore for me the seasons run
Their round, and will the sun
Of ardent summers yet to come forget
For me to rise and set ? »
Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
Wherever thou mayst be,
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
Each answering unto each.
For this still hour, this sense of mystery far
Beyond the evening star,
No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll:
The soul would fain with soul
Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfill
The wise-disposing Will,
And, in the evening as at morning, trust
The A11-Merciful and Just.
The solemn joy that soul-communion feels,
Immortal life reveals;
And human love, its prophecy and sign,
Interprets love divine.
Come then, in thought, if that alone may be,
O friend! and bring with thee
Thy calm assurance of transcendent spheres,
And the eternal years!
xxv11-998
## p. 15953 (#294) ##########################################
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## p. 15953 (#295) ##########################################
16
POD
JUTTU
CHR. WIELAND
## p. 15953 (#296) ##########################################
15954
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
(1733-1813)
M
RITERS of a certain class exercise a fruitful influence in their
day, and form an important part in the contemporary liter-
ary development, yet with the lapse of time lose much of
their claim on our interest. This is true of Wieland, whose services
to the German language and literature were decided.
Both in prose
and verse he helped to make the tongue an artistic instrument of.
expression, lending it grace, definiteness, elegance: he gave it a sort
of French refinement. He was largely active in reviving both classi-
cal and mediæval studies; he introduced Shakespeare to his country-
men, and by his keen, sane criticism did much for German culture.
Wieland was a humanist at a time when taste and scholarship were
sorely needed in the fatherland. He was a writer of lively wit and
fancy, sometimes running into frivolity and sensuality. He initiated
the historical culture-novel and psychological romance. He produced
an epic, Oberon, which had an immense vogue in his own and other
languages, though now it commands little more than a formal regard.
An English critic, writing at the beginning of the present century,
could remark soberly with (Oberon' in mind, that “the fame of Wie-
land is as wide-spread as that of Horace. ” That such praise now
seems excessive, must not blind us to the poet's merits and genuine
contributions to the literature of his country. Fashions in literature
succeed each other almost as rapidly as fashions in dress.
Christopher Martin Wieland, by ancestry, education, and early
habit, had a bias towards philosophical and religious thought, though
the writings of his maturity were of a very different kind.
He was
the son of a country clergyman, and was born in the Suabian village
of Oberholzheim, on September 5th, 1733. He was carefully instructed
under his father's direction, and showed literary precocity. When
fourteen he went to school at Klosterbergen, near Magdeburg, where
his exceptional abilities attracted attention. Next we find him living
with a relative in Erfurt, and reading for the University. The fam-
ily home was moved to Biberach during this preparation; and it was
there he met and fell in love with Sophie Gutermann, afterwards the
wife of De Laroche, who was the factotum of Count Stadion, in whose
home Wieland was a constant visitor in after years. The intimacy
became in time a platonic friendship, but made its deep impress upon
Wieland's ripening powers. The idea of his first poem, "The Nature
## p. 15953 (#297) ##########################################
CHR W
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》。
CHR. WIE LAND
ارایه
## p. 15954 (#300) ##########################################
## p. 15955 (#301) ##########################################
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15955
of Things,' written and published several years later, came to him
while he was walking with Sophie.
He went to Tübingen in 1750,- nominally to study law, but gave
his main attention to philology, philosophy, and literature. Wieland
was one of the army of young men in all lands who begin with
the law, and are irresistibly deflected by their taste toward letters.
Bodmer, the Swiss poet, was then a sort of Rhadamanthus in Ger-
man literary affairs, and to him Wieland, fired by ambition, sent his
unfinished manuscript epic 'Hermann”; the result was an invitation
to visit Bodmer at Zürich, and the young aspirant spent a number of
months with the veteran, a cordial friendship being established be-
tween them. Wieland derived much benefit from this association; but
left his friend and patron in 1754, other influences being at work in
him. He lived for some time in Zürich and Bern, supporting him-
self by tutoring. At the University his writings, such as the Moral
Letters and Moral Tales,' had been of a philosophico-ethical and
mystical nature, and under the Swiss influence they continued to be
so for several years.
His Letters from the Dead to Living Friends,'
and other works of this period, are full of spiritual aspiration; and
his tone in rebuking worldly pleasures is austere.
But this was not to be Wieland's typical work. The impulse is
explained by heredity and environment. He went to Biberach in
1760 as Director of Chancery; and as he began to mix in polite soci-
ety, and especially to frequent Count Stadion's house, he developed
into a man of the world, and his writings reflected his experience.
Wit, fancy, satire, and worldly wisdom took the place of pious mystic
imaginings. The romance Don Sylvio von Rosalva' (1764), the cul-
pably free 'Comic Tales? (1766), the romance (Agathon' (1766–67), —
described as the first modern romance of culture, and certainly one of
his most characteristic and able productions,— exhibit this change of
heart; and in the Musarion the next year (1768) a middle ground
is reached, — the author advocating the rational cultivation of the
sensual and spiritual sides of man, avoiding alike the extremes of
the ascetic and the worldling. His study of Shakespeare began at
Biberach; and between 1762 and 1766 he published twenty-two prose
translations of the plays, thus making the English poet an open book
for Germans.
After a three-years' stay in Erfurt as professor of philosophy,
Wieland began in 1772 what was to be a life residence in Weimar.
An interesting feature of this life is his connection with Goethe.
Soon after Wieland's arrival in the city, he listened in an evening
company to the remarkable improvised verses of a young man
known to him, and exclaimed, “That must be either the Devil — or
Goethe! It proved to be the latter. A warm friendship grew up
between the two, in spite of the fact that ethe had
attacked
-
-
un-
## p. 15956 (#302) ##########################################
15956
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
Wieland's writings, and in ‘Gods, Heroes, and Wieland' represented
the other as an object of sport in hell. His literary activity in Wei-
mar was prolific and many-sided;. and here his most famous single
work, the Oberon,' was done. He edited the German Mercury, many
of his writings first appearing in that paper; he began a periodical
called the Attic Museum; wrote some of his best things in the comic
and satiric veins, among them The Inhabitants of Booby-land' (Die
Abderiten: 1774), New Dialogues of the Gods) (1791), and “The
Secret History of the Philosopher Peregrinus Proteus' (1791); and
translated Horace, Lucian, and Cicero, his last labor being expended
on the Letters of the last-named classic.
His masterpiece, Oberon,' was brought out in 1780, and received
with a favor rarely extended to any literary work. It is a romantic
epic, interweaving the love story of the mediaval knight Huon with
an amatory episode in the story of the fairy king and queen, Oberon
and Titania. The poem is written in a skillfully handled stanzaic
form, and in the original possesses vigor, melody, lively invention,
picturesque description, and narrative movement, — qualities some of
which are lost in the English rendering. Its manner and matter now
seem a trifle antiquated. Wieland purchased in 1797 an estate named
Osmannstädt near Weimar, and lived there until 1801; when, his wife
dying, he returned to Weimar, and remained until his own death on
January 20th, 1813. Personally he is drawn as sensitive and vain, but
of pure private life, and of generous impulses. His character may
be studied in his (Selected Letters) (1815-16) and the biographies of
Gruber, Loebell, Ofterdingen, and Pröhle. A most voluminous writer,
his collected works number thirty-six in the edition of 1851-6.
Wieland was not a creative genius, nor a great reformatory force
in literature. He never, in his most representative works, soared
very high nor probed very deep. But he was a gifted writer in
varied fields, whose influence was salutary, and who will always have
a secure place in that particular corner of the Pantheon devoted to
authors just below stellar rank.
MANAGING HUSBANDS
From the Fourth Dialogue,' Volume xxvii. , Collected Works
Jº
UNO O my dear Livia, I am the unhappiest woman in the
world!
Livia - Never had I expected to hear such a word from
-
the lips of the queen of gods and men!
Juno — How, Livia ? Do you too hold the common error that
happiness is the inseparable property of high station ? — when we
## p. 15957 (#303) ##########################################
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15957
-
should deem ourselves lucky could we exchange our position,
with all its prerogatives, for that of the modest joy of a poor
shepherdess who is reconciled to her lot!
Livia — Since I was first among the mortals, I do not remem-
ber ever to have been so dissatisfied with my lot as to wish to
exchange it for a humbler one.
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
## p. 15928 (#268) ##########################################
15928
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God! He needeth not
The poor device of man.
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.
Ye praise his justice; even such
His pitying love I deem:
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.
Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord's beatitudes
And prayer upon the cross.
More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas! I know:
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
Too small the merit show.
I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil mine eyes for shame,
And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.
I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within;
I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.
Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings:
I know that God is good!
Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see,
## p. 15929 (#269) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15929
But nothing can be good in him
Which evil is in me.
The wrong that pains my soul below,
I dare not throne above:
I know not of his hate — I know
His goodness and his love.
I dimly guess from blessings known
Of greater out of sight,
And with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments too are right.
I long for household voices gone,
For vanished smiles I long;
But God hath led my dear ones on,
And he can do no wrong.
I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
And if my heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed he will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.
No offering of my own I have,
Nor works my faith to prove;
I can but give the gifts he gave,
And plead his love for love.
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar;
No harm from him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where his islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond his love and care.
## p. 15930 (#270) ##########################################
15930
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
ICHABOD!
S°
O FALLEN! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Revile him not, - the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven ?
Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains, –
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from tho great eyes
The soul has filed:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame:
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
## p. 15931 (#271) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15931
THE BAREFOOT BOY
B
LESSINGS on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,-
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, – the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools:
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl, and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the groundnut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans ! -
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
## p. 15932 (#272) ##########################################
;5932
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, -
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel-pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread, -
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch; pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
## p. 15933 (#273) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15933
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat.
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
THE FAREWELL
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTH-
ERN BONDAGE
G
ONE, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air ;-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
## p. 15934 (#274) ##########################################
15934
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,-
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone, - sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again,
There no brother's voice shall greet them,-
There no father's welcome meet them.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood's place of play,
From the cool spring where they drank,
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank,-
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there, -
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
-
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Toiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler's prey.
Oh that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant's power is o'er
And the fetter galls no more!
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
## p. 15935 (#275) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15935 .
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth,-
By the bruised reed He spareth,-
Oh, may He to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother's love.
Gone, gone,- sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, –
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
BARCLAY OF URY
P ,
U By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding;
And to all he saw and heard
Answering not with bitter word,
Turning not for chiding.
Came a troop with broadswords swinging,
Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
Loose and free and froward;
Quoth the foremost, «Ride him down!
Push him! prick him! through the town
Drive the Quaker coward!
(
## p. 15936 (#276) ##########################################
15936
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud,
Barclay! ho! a Barclay! ”
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle-tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly,
Who with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud, “God save us!
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle-deep in Lützen's blood,
With the brave Gustavus ? »
"Nay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
“Put it up, I pray thee:
Passive to his holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though he slay me.
Pledges of thy love and faith,
Proved on many a field of death,
Not by me are needed. ”
Marveled much that henchman bold
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
«Woe's the day! ” he sadly said,
With a slowly shaking head
And a look of pity:
“Ury's honest lord reviled,
Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city!
“Speak the word, and master mine,
As we charged on Tilly's line
And his Walloon lancers,
Smiting through their midst we'll teach
Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers! ”
“Marvel not, mine ancient friend:
Like beginning, like the end,”
Quoth the Laird of Ury:
## p. 15937 (#277) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15937
(
“Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
“Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer:
While for them he suffereth long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?
“Happier I, with loss of all,
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen,
Riding out from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me;
“When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
«Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friend's falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving;
But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords,
Warm and fresh and living.
« Through this dark and stormy night
Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking;
Knowing God's own time is best,
In a patient hope I rest
For the full day-breaking! ”
So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison,
Where, through iron grates, he heard
Poor disciples of the Word
Preach of Christ arisen!
XXVII-997
## p. 15938 (#278) ##########################################
15938
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told
Of thy day of trial :
Every age on him who strays
From its broad and beaten ways
Pours its sevenfold vial.
Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;
And while hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter:
Knowing this, that never yet
Share of truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.
Thus, with somewhat of the seer,
Must the moral pioneer
From the future borrow:
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And on midnight's sky of rain
Paint the golden morrow!
CENTENNIAL HYMN
0
UR father's God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and thee;
To thank thee for the era done,
And trust thee for the opening one.
Here, where of old, by thy design,
The fathers spake that word of thine,
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
## p. 15939 (#279) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15939
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
Thou who hast here in concord furled
The war-flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfill
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank thee; but withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,–
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold!
Oh make thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law;
And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
-
WINTER IN-DOORS
From (Snow-Bound)
A
T LAST the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow;
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
## p. 15940 (#280) ##########################################
15940
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment more than wealth;
With simple wishes (not the weak
Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.
Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed with the cider mug their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks wrestling rolled :
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine.
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed
## p. 15941 (#281) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15941
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defense
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells sound;
And following where the teamsters led,
The wise old doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say -
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all —
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother's aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer's sight
The Quaker matron's inward light,
The doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!
So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score:
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid ;
And poetry — or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
## p. 15942 (#282) ##########################################
15942
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding-bell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and lovelorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!
CHILD-SONGS
ST
TILL linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The echoes of the home-born hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,
So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.
## p. 15943 (#283) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15943
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born!
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
. From lisping voices learns, —
The voices loved of him who sang
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side, -
Heard in the Teuton's household songs
And folk-lore of the Finn,
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ Child enters in!
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels;
The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath his small interpreters:
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Our eyes of faith grow dim;
But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him!
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold,
The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom! — Teach thou us,
0 Master most divine,
To feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of thine!
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds;
## p. 15944 (#284) ##########################################
15944
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
No cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall;
The mind of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all!
THE YANKEE GIRL
S**
HE sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before,
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!
How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!
Who comes in his pride to that low cottage-door,-
The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?
'Tis the great Southern planter,— the master who waves
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.
“Nay, Ellen, - for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin,
Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their skin;
Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!
“But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them,-
For shame, Ellen, shame! - cast thy bondage aside,
And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.
« Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong,
But where flowers are blossoming all the year long;
Where the shade of the palm-tree is over my home,
And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!
“Oh, come to my home, where my servants shall all
Depart at thy bidding and come'at thy call;
They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe,
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law. ”
»
Oh, could ye have seen her that pride of our girls –
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls,
## p. 15945 (#285) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15945
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!
“Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!
“And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours,
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy flowers;
But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!
« Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee! »
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
SPEA
PEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away,
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array,
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they far or come they
near ?
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear.
“Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls:
Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls! ”
Who is losing ? who is winning ? —“Over hill and over plain,
I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the mountain rain. "
Holy mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena, look once more. -
“Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly as before,
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman, foot and horse,
Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping down its mountain
course. ”
Look forth once more, Ximena! —“Ah! the smoke has rolled away;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the ranks of gray.
Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop of Minon wheels;
There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.
“Jesu, pity! how it thickens! now retreat and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's charging lance!
## p. 15946 (#286) ##########################################
15946
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together
fall:
Like a plowshare in the fallow, through them plows the Northern
ball.
)
>>
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on.
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost and who has
won ? -
"Alas! alas! I know not: friend and foe together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters, for them all!
с
"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting — Blessed Mother, save my
brain !
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from heaps of slain.
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they fall, and strive to
rise :
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die before our eyes!
“O my heart's love! O my dear one! lay thy poor head on my
knee:
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst thou hear me ?
canst thou see?
O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal, look once more
On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy! mercy! all is o'er! ”
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest;
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said :
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young, a soldier lay,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding slow his life away;
But as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead:
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath
of pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly
smiled:
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did she watch beside her child ?
All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied:
With her kiss upon his forehead, “Mother! ” murmured he, and died!
## p. 15947 (#287) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15947
>>
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping lonely in the North!
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.
Look forth once more, Ximena! — Like a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death
behind:
Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive:
Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive! )
Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool gray shadows
fall:
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle
rolled;
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lack-
ing food;
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern
tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours:
Upward, through its smoke and ashes, spring afresh the Eden
flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air !
THE SEER
I
HEAR the far-off voyager's horn,
I see the Yankee's trail;
His foot on every mountain pass,
On every stream his sail.
He's whittling round St. Mary's Falls,
Upon his loaded wain;
He's leaving on the pictured rocks
His fresh tobacco stain.
I hear the mattock in the mine,
The axe-stroke in the dell,
## p. 15948 (#288) ##########################################
15948
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
The clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuit's chapel bell.
I see the swarthy trappers come
From Mississippi's springs;
The war-chiefs with their painted bows,
And crest of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe
The steamer smokes and raves;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves.
By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see the peddler's show,-
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty with the low.
I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves that soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find -
The raw material of a State,
Its music and its mind.
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train,
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain. .
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindled on its way;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray.
## p. 15949 (#289) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15949
BURNS
(ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM)
N°
MORE these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover:
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of, live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning, -
The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
I heard the squirrels leaping,
The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.
## p. 15950 (#290) ##########################################
15950
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
I watched him while in sportive mood
I read The Twa Dogs'' story,
And half believed he understood
The poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs! - The golden hours
Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor:
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When fariner boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already ?
I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.
I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweet-brier and the clover;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood-hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,
The child of God's baptizing!
## p. 15951 (#291) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15951
With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly;
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy.
And if at times an evil strain,
To lawless love appealing,
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,
It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining:
No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings;
Sweet Soul of Song! -I own my debt
Uncanceled by his failings!
Lament who will the ribald line
Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.
Not his the song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render,-
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor!
But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer ?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer ?
Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So 'Bonnie Doon' but tarry;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary!
## p. 15952 (#292) ##########################################
15952
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
THE SUMMONS
M
Y EAR is full of summer sounds,
Of summer sights my languid eye;
Beyond the dusty village bounds
I loiter in my daily rounds,
And in the noontime shadows lie.
I hear the wild bee wind his horn,
The bird swings on the ripened wheat,
The long green lances of the corn
Are tilting in the winds of morn,
The locust shrills his song of heat.
Another sound my spirit hears -
A deeper sound that drowns them all:
A voice of pleading choked with tears,
The call of human hopes and fears,
The Macedonian cry to Paul.
The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;
I know the word and countersign:
Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,
Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
I know the place that should be mine.
Shamed be the hands that idly fold,
And lips that woo the reed's accord,
When laggard Time the hour has tolled
For true with false and new with old
To fight the battles of the Lord!
O brothers! blest by partial Fate
With power to match the will and deed,
To him your summons comes too late
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,
And has no answer but God-speed!
## p. 15953 (#293) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15953
THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
(WRITTEN WHEN THE POET WAS NEARLY 83)
S
.
UMMER's last sun nigh unto setting shines
Through yon columnar pines,
And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
Its golden lines are
re drawn.
Dreaming of long-gone summer days like this,
Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
Have still their old delight,
I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
Lapse tenderly away;
And wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
I ask, “Is this the last ?
« Will nevermore for me the seasons run
Their round, and will the sun
Of ardent summers yet to come forget
For me to rise and set ? »
Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
Wherever thou mayst be,
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
Each answering unto each.
For this still hour, this sense of mystery far
Beyond the evening star,
No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll:
The soul would fain with soul
Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfill
The wise-disposing Will,
And, in the evening as at morning, trust
The A11-Merciful and Just.
The solemn joy that soul-communion feels,
Immortal life reveals;
And human love, its prophecy and sign,
Interprets love divine.
Come then, in thought, if that alone may be,
O friend! and bring with thee
Thy calm assurance of transcendent spheres,
And the eternal years!
xxv11-998
## p. 15953 (#294) ##########################################
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16
POD
JUTTU
CHR. WIELAND
## p. 15953 (#296) ##########################################
15954
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
(1733-1813)
M
RITERS of a certain class exercise a fruitful influence in their
day, and form an important part in the contemporary liter-
ary development, yet with the lapse of time lose much of
their claim on our interest. This is true of Wieland, whose services
to the German language and literature were decided.
Both in prose
and verse he helped to make the tongue an artistic instrument of.
expression, lending it grace, definiteness, elegance: he gave it a sort
of French refinement. He was largely active in reviving both classi-
cal and mediæval studies; he introduced Shakespeare to his country-
men, and by his keen, sane criticism did much for German culture.
Wieland was a humanist at a time when taste and scholarship were
sorely needed in the fatherland. He was a writer of lively wit and
fancy, sometimes running into frivolity and sensuality. He initiated
the historical culture-novel and psychological romance. He produced
an epic, Oberon, which had an immense vogue in his own and other
languages, though now it commands little more than a formal regard.
An English critic, writing at the beginning of the present century,
could remark soberly with (Oberon' in mind, that “the fame of Wie-
land is as wide-spread as that of Horace. ” That such praise now
seems excessive, must not blind us to the poet's merits and genuine
contributions to the literature of his country. Fashions in literature
succeed each other almost as rapidly as fashions in dress.
Christopher Martin Wieland, by ancestry, education, and early
habit, had a bias towards philosophical and religious thought, though
the writings of his maturity were of a very different kind.
He was
the son of a country clergyman, and was born in the Suabian village
of Oberholzheim, on September 5th, 1733. He was carefully instructed
under his father's direction, and showed literary precocity. When
fourteen he went to school at Klosterbergen, near Magdeburg, where
his exceptional abilities attracted attention. Next we find him living
with a relative in Erfurt, and reading for the University. The fam-
ily home was moved to Biberach during this preparation; and it was
there he met and fell in love with Sophie Gutermann, afterwards the
wife of De Laroche, who was the factotum of Count Stadion, in whose
home Wieland was a constant visitor in after years. The intimacy
became in time a platonic friendship, but made its deep impress upon
Wieland's ripening powers. The idea of his first poem, "The Nature
## p. 15953 (#297) ##########################################
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CHR. WIE LAND
ارایه
## p. 15954 (#300) ##########################################
## p. 15955 (#301) ##########################################
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15955
of Things,' written and published several years later, came to him
while he was walking with Sophie.
He went to Tübingen in 1750,- nominally to study law, but gave
his main attention to philology, philosophy, and literature. Wieland
was one of the army of young men in all lands who begin with
the law, and are irresistibly deflected by their taste toward letters.
Bodmer, the Swiss poet, was then a sort of Rhadamanthus in Ger-
man literary affairs, and to him Wieland, fired by ambition, sent his
unfinished manuscript epic 'Hermann”; the result was an invitation
to visit Bodmer at Zürich, and the young aspirant spent a number of
months with the veteran, a cordial friendship being established be-
tween them. Wieland derived much benefit from this association; but
left his friend and patron in 1754, other influences being at work in
him. He lived for some time in Zürich and Bern, supporting him-
self by tutoring. At the University his writings, such as the Moral
Letters and Moral Tales,' had been of a philosophico-ethical and
mystical nature, and under the Swiss influence they continued to be
so for several years.
His Letters from the Dead to Living Friends,'
and other works of this period, are full of spiritual aspiration; and
his tone in rebuking worldly pleasures is austere.
But this was not to be Wieland's typical work. The impulse is
explained by heredity and environment. He went to Biberach in
1760 as Director of Chancery; and as he began to mix in polite soci-
ety, and especially to frequent Count Stadion's house, he developed
into a man of the world, and his writings reflected his experience.
Wit, fancy, satire, and worldly wisdom took the place of pious mystic
imaginings. The romance Don Sylvio von Rosalva' (1764), the cul-
pably free 'Comic Tales? (1766), the romance (Agathon' (1766–67), —
described as the first modern romance of culture, and certainly one of
his most characteristic and able productions,— exhibit this change of
heart; and in the Musarion the next year (1768) a middle ground
is reached, — the author advocating the rational cultivation of the
sensual and spiritual sides of man, avoiding alike the extremes of
the ascetic and the worldling. His study of Shakespeare began at
Biberach; and between 1762 and 1766 he published twenty-two prose
translations of the plays, thus making the English poet an open book
for Germans.
After a three-years' stay in Erfurt as professor of philosophy,
Wieland began in 1772 what was to be a life residence in Weimar.
An interesting feature of this life is his connection with Goethe.
Soon after Wieland's arrival in the city, he listened in an evening
company to the remarkable improvised verses of a young man
known to him, and exclaimed, “That must be either the Devil — or
Goethe! It proved to be the latter. A warm friendship grew up
between the two, in spite of the fact that ethe had
attacked
-
-
un-
## p. 15956 (#302) ##########################################
15956
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
Wieland's writings, and in ‘Gods, Heroes, and Wieland' represented
the other as an object of sport in hell. His literary activity in Wei-
mar was prolific and many-sided;. and here his most famous single
work, the Oberon,' was done. He edited the German Mercury, many
of his writings first appearing in that paper; he began a periodical
called the Attic Museum; wrote some of his best things in the comic
and satiric veins, among them The Inhabitants of Booby-land' (Die
Abderiten: 1774), New Dialogues of the Gods) (1791), and “The
Secret History of the Philosopher Peregrinus Proteus' (1791); and
translated Horace, Lucian, and Cicero, his last labor being expended
on the Letters of the last-named classic.
His masterpiece, Oberon,' was brought out in 1780, and received
with a favor rarely extended to any literary work. It is a romantic
epic, interweaving the love story of the mediaval knight Huon with
an amatory episode in the story of the fairy king and queen, Oberon
and Titania. The poem is written in a skillfully handled stanzaic
form, and in the original possesses vigor, melody, lively invention,
picturesque description, and narrative movement, — qualities some of
which are lost in the English rendering. Its manner and matter now
seem a trifle antiquated. Wieland purchased in 1797 an estate named
Osmannstädt near Weimar, and lived there until 1801; when, his wife
dying, he returned to Weimar, and remained until his own death on
January 20th, 1813. Personally he is drawn as sensitive and vain, but
of pure private life, and of generous impulses. His character may
be studied in his (Selected Letters) (1815-16) and the biographies of
Gruber, Loebell, Ofterdingen, and Pröhle. A most voluminous writer,
his collected works number thirty-six in the edition of 1851-6.
Wieland was not a creative genius, nor a great reformatory force
in literature. He never, in his most representative works, soared
very high nor probed very deep. But he was a gifted writer in
varied fields, whose influence was salutary, and who will always have
a secure place in that particular corner of the Pantheon devoted to
authors just below stellar rank.
MANAGING HUSBANDS
From the Fourth Dialogue,' Volume xxvii. , Collected Works
Jº
UNO O my dear Livia, I am the unhappiest woman in the
world!
Livia - Never had I expected to hear such a word from
-
the lips of the queen of gods and men!
Juno — How, Livia ? Do you too hold the common error that
happiness is the inseparable property of high station ? — when we
## p. 15957 (#303) ##########################################
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND
15957
-
should deem ourselves lucky could we exchange our position,
with all its prerogatives, for that of the modest joy of a poor
shepherdess who is reconciled to her lot!
Livia — Since I was first among the mortals, I do not remem-
ber ever to have been so dissatisfied with my lot as to wish to
exchange it for a humbler one.
